Letters to the editor: Our right to live

The State Department report is a warning to all that President Barack Obama has no guts.

Our right to live Your June 21 issue had two important news items worthy of comment (“Steinitz: US report on Iran terrorism should end delusions about nuke deal” and “IDF, Shin Bet scour W. Bank for terrorist who shot Israeli dead near Dolev on Friday”).

The State Department report is a warning to all that President Barack Obama has no guts. He cannot deal with Iran and has chosen to whitewash the report of his own government. He has made an accommodation with evil so that he can leave the White House and dump it on the next president.

In Israel, we, too, are making accommodations. We are willing to live with murder as long as it is individual murder and not mass murder. Yet we cannot handle constantly having new victims of terror. We cannot handle the absolute hypocrisy of the world. We cannot handle our own Israelis who say, “Just give in to the world and we will survive.”

We cannot live like this. It is time to wake up and demand more safety for ourselves, and more basic decency from the rest of the world regarding our right to live.

THELMA SUSSWEIN Jerusalem
‘De Gaulle’ of him
In reference to “France’s Fabius says frozen peace process could reignite violence” (June 21), with all due respect to the French foreign minister, he has “De Gaulle” to tell Israel what it should do.

How about him first cleaning up the mess in Syria, a country France created? With people dying there by the thousands, why is he not in Syria putting out the flames?

LOUIS ZETLER Hoshaya
United we stand
Concerning “Netanyahu: A ‘black day’ for UN” (June 21), there could be one positive element in UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s outrageous, unfounded and hypocritical statements regarding the IDF’s brutality and “criminal acts” against children: He managed to rally the Israeli Right and Left in eloquent and unequivocal defense of the country’s very cause and existence.

Given the fact that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Likud), MK Yair Lapid (Yesh Atid) and MK Ilan Gilon (Meretz) all unequivocally, soundly and roundly condemned Ban’s statements, I couldn’t help but wonder if this might be a strong, perhaps divine hint and message to all: For the true sake and love of Israel, it’s time to stop all the internal bickering and unite in order to more effectively fight our enemies.

To paraphrase the well-known cliché, united we stand, divided we definitely will fall.

GERSHON HARRIS Hatzor Haglilit

Syria’s Druse I agree wholeheartedly that any active Israeli intervention in the Syrian quagmire would be disastrous (“Israel and Syria,” Editorial, June 21). However, there are other alternatives to protect the Druse.

You state that the Druse on the Golan Heights have remained passionately pro-Assad. They are, no doubt, looking after their own interests, given Israel’s vacillation.

Up until now, a vocal Israeli minority has advocated surrendering the Golan to Syria. Can we now declare that this will never be an option? We should now state that Syria no longer exists as a viable country, so we will be annexing the Golan and will never abandon it, under any circumstances.

We should then offer military training to any Druse who want to assume Israeli citizenship. An IDF camp for this purpose, in proximity to a Druse village in the Golan, would serve that purpose. As some Druse might even sneak into Israel and enlist in order to get military training, screening would be necessary.

Once a body of militarily trained Druse has been created, supplying weapons and ammunition to those villages that want to defend themselves would be in order. This would create a buffer zone between Israel and the various forces operating in Syria, at a minimum cost and risk of Israeli lives.

RITA STAR Ma’aleh Adumim

With regard to “Blood covenant” (Editorial, June 19), the Druse have a longstanding policy of loyalty to the government of the country they live in. In Israel, they support the government. In Lebanon, they are allied with Hezbollah. In Syria, they are loyal to President Bashar Assad – he of the barrel bombs and poison gas.

Now you want to admit tens of thousands of Assad’s supporters into Israel?

BARRY NESTER Jerusalem

Church arson With regard to “PM: Outrageous arson at Galilee church is an attack on us all” (June 19), on November 9, 1938, when I was a nine-yearold boy, I saw the Great Synagogue at Frankfurt’s Friedberger Anlage burning.

I am disgusted that Jews can sink so low as to burn a church. Even if it is proved that Jews did not do it, the mere suspicion in today’s climate is bad enough.

NAFTALI WERTHEIM Tirat Zvi

A long lifeWords are weapons, and J. Zel Lurie (“After 48 years, let’s end the occupation!” Observations, June 19) is a master at using them. But on occasion, he has made very serious errors.

When Leon Uris came out with Exodus, the novel on the birth of Israel, Hadassah Magazine, then under Lurie’s editorship, panned it very harshly. The women of Hadassah told him to take a second look, and the magazine was full of praise a month later.

Zel slept in our house when he came to visit during the Six Day War. I remember his fear about what we would do with all the land, and about the return of Israel to its proper borders.

I hope he will live long enough to write an article on how the peace process was saved.

MURRAY S. GREENFIELD Tel Aviv
‘Tikkun olam’ When we were being inundated by illegals of all kinds from many African countries, did any European nation pay attention or offer to help? No, we had to manage by ourselves, as we continue to do.

As a nation of eight million, we have some 40,000 “refugees.” By proportion, Europe’s population of 400 million should manage to take in two million refugees or more, as those countries have more means and certainly more land. Yet they turn it into an international crisis.

Are they following our example? Are they learning about tikkun olam, the Jewish practice of “repairing the world”? Some good might yet come out of this.

LEON CHARNEY Yehud

Questions for Oren
Kudos to Kulanu MK Michael Oren for his op-eds in the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and Foreign Policy. Finally, Israel’s point of view is being presented the way it should have been years ago. But I have two questions.

1. Why did Oren advise against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech on Capitol Hill? After all, the only way to stop President Barack Obama’s insane Iran deal was to warn Congress.

2. In his Times op-ed “Why Obama is wrong about Iran being ‘rational’ on nukes,” Oren writes: “As famed Middle East scholar Bernard Lewis once observed, ‘Mutually assured destruction’ for the Iranian regime ‘is not a deterrent – it’s an inducement.’” Why was it that he never quoted Lewis in his capacity as Israel’s ambassador to the US? Was Israel intentionally avoiding the opinion on MAD by a leading western scholar of Islam?

MLADEN ANDRIJASEVIC Beersheba

APOLOGY Due to technical glitches, previously published puzzles appeared in last Friday’s Jerusalem Post Magazine. We regret the error

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